Justice committee  Thank you. Good morning. My name is Pam Hrick. I'm the executive director and general counsel of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, also known as LEAF. I am grateful to appear before you today from Toronto or Tkaronto, which is within the lands protected by the Dish

Justice committee  Sure. I'll take a stab at this first. Before I get into what we are doing with the limited resources that we have as organizations and advocates in this area, I will say that I think when we're talking about how well, as a society, we're dealing with sexual violence, we have a t

Justice committee  I'll take the opportunity to reiterate that it was an incredibly small gap that the Brown decision created, and I will emphasize again that simply being drunk or being high is not a defence to crimes of general intent, including sexual assault. What the Supreme Court did here wa

Justice committee  Yes, we spoke with the Minister of Justice's office.

Justice committee  If the government was going to move forward with a legislative response to the Brown decision striking down the former section 33.1, we felt that this was the option that ought to be pursued, as opposed to a second option that was offered up by the Supreme Court of creating a sta

Justice committee  Happily. Yes, I was nodding along quite a lot. I find I do that when Farrah is speaking, because she's right. We do need to prioritize better funding for prevention and education and, where sexual assault has occurred, support for survivors. As Ms. Khan correctly pointed out, we

Justice committee  Again, I am in very enthusiastic agreement with Ms. Khan. It's a hugely important issue. I speak especially as a member of a national organization. We don't have options to access, for example, core funding that might be offered at the provincial or territorial level. We need to

Justice committee  I don't know how many times I'm allowed to simply agree with Farrah, but I will agree with her. I'll leave it at that. I can't put it any more eloquently.

Justice committee  I appreciate the opportunity to be able to speak to this. My concern with any sort of reverse onus at this point is the large risk that the Supreme Court would find that to be unconstitutional. What I do appreciate about how this particular bill was tailored and implemented is

Justice committee  No, of course not. What I do think is that people, particularly at this committee, and all parliamentarians, need to understand the ways in which racialized people—Black, indigenous—are disproportionately criminalized. You need look no further than the statistic that 50% of feder

Justice committee  Right, and that's exactly what our charter requires. It requires the protection of rights of accused persons and also provides for the protection of rights of equality-deserving groups, including women and girls. The particular provision in subsection 33.1(2) that is, I think, im

Justice committee  I envision fully funding, as Ms. Khan already said, restorative justice, transformative justice processes and community-based accountability mechanisms. As somebody who has been on the front lines of some of that, Ms. Khan may be well placed to actually share some of those experi

Justice committee  I do think that we need to ensure that survivors—and in the context of the criminal system, they're legally called “complainants”—do have access to that independent legal advice and are given proper information throughout from the Crown prosecution service, and from the victim/wi

Justice committee  I'd say that we do need to have better education and information sharing about this. I know that the Supreme Court, in cases like this, of course gives a bit of a heads-up that the decision is coming so the implications of it can be thought through and plans can be made in advanc

Justice committee  Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon. As has been mentioned, my name is Pam Hrick. I'm the executive director and general counsel of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund, or LEAF. We use litigation, law reform and public legal education to advance the equality of women,